I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I’ve used this lesson every Autumn to engage children into the Literacy skills needed to write a good instruction text, by linking it to how to use sparklers safely on bonfire night. This pack includes a Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for one lesson, and differentiated worksheets for pupils to plan their instructions before independently writing them up into their books.
Suitable for KS2 - and do get a health and safety check before demonstrating with a real life sparkler. I did, and it amazed the kids and really energised their writing!
UPDATE 02/11/2018 - RESOURCE NOW INCLUDES PRESENTATION IN POWERPOINT FORMAT!
This resource nicely extends children learning about World War II by comparing London's post-war infrastructure to modern day.
It compares various images from post-war to modern day (which children find particularly intriguing!) and uses engaging BBC short video clips to examine how housing infrastructure has changed since the war.
As the main activity, children will identify key London landmarks by their pictures, stick and label them in their books, read an information text about how London has changed since WWII and see if they can find any information about their landmarks, noting facts next to the relevant pictures.
The resource includes a full lesson Notebook presentation, the full information text, the images comparing post-war and modern day London, along with the activity resource sheet and instructions. Enjoy!
I made this resource based on the 2017 John Lewis Christmas advert. It is about a little boy who struggles to sleep at night, scared that in the dark, a monster lives under his bed. Eventually, the boy becomes friend with the monster, but it continues to affect his sleeping, leaving him tired during the day. For Christmas, he gets a special present to help him sleep well at night, content that his monster friend, Moz, will be sleeping too.
It's got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children's description, focusing in this instant on character emotions. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and a Notebook presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
13/11/17 - UPDATE to include a direct link to the video in the presentation
I made this resource based on the 2018 Barbour Christmas advert. It is about a girl who appears to have loved watching and reading The Snowman; the famous Christmas animation short film, 40 years since it was first released; and wants the story to come to life for herself.
It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this instant on character emotions. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
I made this resource based on the 2017 Marks and Spencer Christmas advert. It features Paddington Bear, who confuses a burglar with Santa Claus. Enthusiastic as ever, Paddington insists on helping the man with his Christmas deliveries, to the dismay of the burglar, who sees his stolen presents being taken off him. Paddington takes his new friend to observe a little girl, Alice, opening her presents, unwittingly showing the burglar the true meaning of Christmas and making him a better person.
It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children will love, having already enjoyed Paddington stories previously.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children's writing, focusing in this instant on dialogue and speech verbs. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and a Smart Notebook or Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
UPDATED 05/11/2018 TO INCLUDE A POWERPOINT VERSION OF THE LESSON PRESENTATION
I made this resource based on the 2018 Aldi Christmas advert. It is about Kevin the Carrot, who has previously featured in Aldi adverts. The advert starts as a spoof of the famous Cola Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ advert, until the truck hits snowfall on a mountain road and slides off the road, balancing precariously on the cliff edge, ending the advert literally on a cliffhanger.
Aldi themselves ask the audience at the end of the advert to help Kevin, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for children to have a go at writing their own version of the end of the story.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this activity on being able to continue the flow of a story. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
This bundle contains three different lesson activities, all of which develop children's atlas skills. One activity gets children to use an atlas to locate rivers of the world, another gets them to locate UK cities/rivers/parks and the third teaches children about latitude and longitude.
I made this resource based on the 2016 John Lewis Christmas advert. It is about a dog called Buster who loves watching his young owner dream of being a professional gymnast, but then as her surprise gift is built on Christmas Eve, Buster appears becomes upset when the garden wildlife get to have a go, unbeknown to the family. The next morning, as the little girl flies out of bed and out into the garden to try her present, the family are lost for words when Buster pushes her aside to leap on to the trampoline first.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because John Lewis adverts have become incredibly popular in the run up to Christmas, and therefore children find them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing especially on verbs. Included are two differentiated story plans, a vocabulary sheet with larger screen shots from the film and a Notebook flip chart or Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy!
And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by John Lewis Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
**UPDATED 05/11/2018 TO INCLUDE POWERPOINT VERSION OF THE LESSON PRESENTATION**
This lesson models to children how to convert times between the 12 and 24 hour clocks using the following Success Criteria:
* I know that there are 24 hours in a day
* I know morning = am / afternoon = pm
* I label an analogue clock using 24 hour times
* I can use my clock to tell the time across 24 hours
Challenge: I can tell the time to the nearest minute
It is contains a balanced mixture of partner talk questions, teacher modelling and independent activities, along with helpful links to resources to support the objective. It even has a challenge plenary at the end, asking pupils to write 24 hour times on a blank analogue clock.
I've included a short lesson activity for this lesson, but I cannot include worksheets for this lesson as I would be copyrighting other people's resources, but I have included links on one page to analogue clock resources. Enjoy!
This is a fun lesson which allows children to learn and appreciate other social aspects of life during World War II. It starts by questioning children’s current understanding and enjoyment of entertainment via the radio, and informs them of its importance in the 1930s.
It includes example radio clips from the war, asking children to discuss their features, and then goes on to compare those with clips from present day news broadcasting (both radio and television).
The lesson objective and success criteria are as follows:
Objective: To be able to write and broadcast a World War Two radio news bulletin
Success Criteria:
I can select key information about an event
I can bias my report in favour of the Allied war effort
I can use emotive language to engage the listener
I can speak clearly
I can use intonation and expression in my voice
In my lesson I gave children facts about a particular bombing raid in London and asked them to report it as if they were a 1930s broadcaster. It was brilliant to see them dramatising their pronunciation and tone, and how they took different perspectives about the same event. I’ve left it open in the resource presentation as to what resource you would want to use for the children to complete this task.
There are lots more WWII resources in my shop too if you want to link further lessons. Enjoy!
This lesson explains why gas masks were used during World War 2, including video clips from the 1930s reminding people to carry their masks with them at all times and to practise wearing them once a week.
The lesson brainstorms what they were made from and their effectiveness, before comparing adult and child gas masks. The lesson objective is for children to make a gas mask using given materials, considering comfort, effectiveness to keep out gas, and appeal for children to wear them.
There are lots more WWII resources in my shop too if you want to link further lessons. Enjoy!
I have used Pixar's brilliant 'Lifted' animation for two short-burst English/Literacy lessons - one as a general recount and the other as a first person recount from one character's point of view. The latter is the resource that I have shared, as I found it to be the most useful out of the two in my teaching practise. I requires children to infer a character's thoughts and feelings and to convert a given narrative into the first person, therefore allowing teachers to test a range of writing skills in one lesson, which the children themselves love because of the engaging resource!
This resource consists of various word problems themed around money which require knowledge of various mathematical skills, from calculating percentages to division. Additionally, it helps to introduce economic topics to primary pupils, such as mortgages. Suitable for UKS2 / Year 6 learners.
Here's a resource I've enjoyed using over and over, as it gets the kids to do most of the learning! The best way for children to understand the features of different Literacy texts is for them to explore and compare different examples. This worksheet focuses on the features of persuasive texts, which children would look out for in different examples, tick or cross whether they could spot them, and evidence by including an extract (e.g. if they have ticked that a text uses a rhetorical question, they need to note it on the sheet). This task promotes clear investigative, reading and literacy skills which could be completed independently, in partners or even together as a group!
This lesson introduces children to Limerick poetry and gets them to try writing one of their own. I used this as a one-off lesson, but could easily be extended across one or multiple weeks. I made a cross-curricular link with our class topic, water, and again, this resource could easily be adapted to suit your topic or year group.
Also included is a planning worksheet for your class to brainstorm their ideas before writing their poem neatly either on the sheet provided or independently in their books. Enjoy!
I made this lesson to help my class develop their variation of sentence starters. My lesson notebook models different examples using the helpful poster (which can be made into a dice) and then gets children to apply their understanding by recounting the animation of George and The Dragon (as our Literacy topic at that time was Myths and Legends).
This can easily be adapted to link with a particular theme or year group.
This activity would link well with primary teaching of forces, specifically gravity. It is in two parts: the first requires pupils to demonstrate their basic understanding by filling in missing words into a information paragraph about gravity (the missing words being at the bottom to select from). The second part requires children to demonstrate their understanding of gravity from own experiences, drawing pictures of where they have seen the force of gravity in action.
Suitable for a Upper KS1 or Lower KS2 classes. Enjoy - and look out for more of my Science resources in my TES shop!
These seven lessons cover a fun and engaging half-term topic on Plants.
Learning objectives cover:
The parts of a plant
Photosynthesis
Plant lifecycle
Plant growth (soil)
Seed dispersal (reproduction)
The resource pack also includes ideas for an interactive and engaging classroom or corridor display!
Is your current English topic focusing on persuasive texts/adverts? Here's a handy plan for children to brainstorm/note their ideas before they do their final design! It gets children to think about different vocabulary they will use, and includes LO/SC to make skill targets clear.
These two lessons introduce what charcoal is (i.e. where it comes from), why it became a popular art form during the Victorian period and the techniques to sketching using charcoal.